Post by TheShadow on Nov 4, 2005 19:38:43 GMT -5
www.sfgate.com/
By Ray Ratto
To fully understand what the City of Oakland, Alameda County and the Oakland Raiders agreed to Wednesday, one must first get a large bottle of Ma's Old-Fashioned Cider, a large bottle of Ma's Old Fashioned Gin, and then check into a room at Ma's Old Fashioned Inn off Highway 56.
You know what happens next.
A news conference was called Wednesday to announce the end of 11 years of lousy customer service. Al Davis smiled at Ignacio de la Fuente, who smiled at Amy Trask, who smiled at Gail Steele, and they all blithely wrote off the last decade of hosing the voters and ticket-buyers as one of those weird things that happens sometimes.
And what have we learned? That forgiveness usually goes down best when the person you're forgiving is yourself.
But that's neither here nor there, or anywhere else, for that matter. The fact that Al took time from his busy schedule to acknowledge that his principal business is actually located in Oakland is news enough. That de la Fuente and Steele actually met with the Raiders and left with their pants and car keys is an even bigger deal.
What it is not, however, is evidence that all is finally straightened out in this marriage of inconvenience. The only thing we actually know is that the Raiders have finally joined the community of teams that sell their own tickets and do their own marketing, a community that includes every team that has ever existed, for God's sake!
In fact, what the Raiders and the city and county agreed to do was remove one additional excuse to the many people who have successfully resisted the lure of Sundays at the Coliseum. There still is a much larger one.
The team itself.
You see, the sellout problem (56 of 84 games have been blacked out locally since they returned) wasn't a problem when the Raiders were winning. Half of those 28 sellouts came in three seasons -- 2000, '01 and '02, when the Raiders were 33-15 and made the playoffs each time. Five others came in their first year back, 1995.
In other words, when they weren't new or good, they have sold out nine times. That's strictly Arizona Cardinals stuff, and the people who don't attend the games in those circumstances are simply careful consumers who don't see the need to invest $400 of family entertainment jack watching them get smoked by the Broncos.
You see, marketing is about providing a service or item that people are willing to give you money to watch, consume or smear all over your chest -- depending, of course, on the item involved.
That definition is provided for the Raiders' benefit, since marketing the team is a) their problem at long last, and b) a complete and utter mystery to them.
The issue with personal seat licenses comes in only when you remember that the licenses get sold ahead of time, and the Raiders sit on that money listening to it collecting interest. That comes with outreach and promotions and giveaways and media relations that rise about the minimum.
We're talking here, however, about basic appeal, and the Raiders' appeal is solely and entirely based on their playing like the old Raiders. As for the new Raiders, the team that is 47-72 when you remove the three good years from their resume, you couldn't wrap tickets around Beyonce Knowles and move them.
Now don't get us wrong here. That picture of Trask and de la Fuente and Steele and The Al smiling at the dais is utterly priceless, well worth clipping and saving for the moment when the city's appeal of the latest court case against them comes. At that moment, they will retreat to their more typical poses -- grim, surly, even downright hate-filled.
For that one moment, though, they looked positively not nauseated to see each other, and that is a small reason for Raider fans to rejoice. It doesn't extend the stadium lease, it doesn't make the lawsuit disappear, and it definitely does not lower anyone's property taxes. It just beats open hostility.
What's better, though, than all of that, is a team that doesn't stink. This Raider team did stink for awhile, but it's on a mini-roll, winning three of four and sneaking up on the far outskirts of the playoff race. The next two weeks, at Kansas City and home against Denver, will tell us which path they intend to pursue between now and Christmas.
In other words, marketing is all well and good, and not gouging the customer is even more effective. But winning football games is still best of all. And if the Raiders intend to join the rest of us in the 21st century, they can start by providing a product worth marketing.
Then they can work on not whining about their stadium, or about the city they're in, or about the mean and vicious media, or about the crooked officials, or all the other things they like to kvetch about in those quiet moments between waking up in the morning and falling asleep at night.
When they've figured all that out, then we'll work on whatever the hell it is they're trying to accomplish.